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0 pointsbux931y ago0 comments

If you read >The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by national governments. as >The EU (as often) is being used here as a scapegoat for anti-democratic policies desired by democratically elected national governments.

This is a perfectly fine statement. The policy is argued to be anti-democratic because of its substance, not because of how democratic the process is by which it is adopted.

A measure with broad popular support can be anti-democratic, a measure only supported by a small portion of the population can be pro-democratic. It's orthogonal and if anything there is an inverse correlation.

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constantcrying1y ago

The issue of chat control is also orthogonal to it's "democracy". It is neither democratic nor anti-democratic. It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government, labeling arbitrary issues as "anti-democratic" just because you don't like them is very unhelpful.

vidarh1y ago

Without expressing my stance on this policy itself: Many measures can be reasonably called "democratic" or "anti-democratic" because they have the potential to affect the ability of the populace to express dissent, and organise political opposition, or because it is seen of creating the tools for the government to create a chilling effect in that respect. As such, it is not at all "obvious" that everyone will agree that it does not affect peoples democratic rights, whether you think so or not.

KajMagnus1y ago

> It obviously in no way invalidates people's rights to determine their government

But it can do that, if / when it starts getting misused.

There was this "SS not all criminals" political party, AfD in Germany, that got lots of votes during the EU elections. AfD + Chat Control is not any good

bux93OP1y ago

Nonsense. Chat control is prior constraint of speech. You can't argue that automated content filters are not censorship. You can agree with the ends (or what content is filtered, and even the governance), but the means themselves are thoroughly anti-democratic. And rife for abuse.

growse1y ago

If this issue got put to a straight referendum, and won >80% of the vote, would it then be democratic?

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